thanks I have a friend with a volt meter so I'll ask him to come over tomorrow, also I just did another discharge and I took note of how many milliamps were taken and it was 1243mah from an apparently fully charged 1600mah battery so not sure if that sheds any light on the situation, I'll do a charge and see how many milliamps it takes ... as you can probably tell I don't know a lot about charging but I have been doing my research and reading my manuals so I am trying to get my head around it (mainly so I don't burn my house down) ... thank you for your help